Special report: Saomai lands in China

                             Saomai lands East China
 
    BEIJING, Aug. 11 -- Typhoon Saomai has landed in Cangnan County in east China's Zhejiang Province, lashing the area with severe gales and rainstorms.

    Twenty-eight people have been killed, and three are missing. Over a thousand houses have been toppled, and local power supplies disrupted.

    Weather forecasters say that most cities and counties in the southeastern part of Zhejiang are under threat from possible geological disasters. Saomai has now weakened slightly, but is still moving westwards.

    This is the strongest typhoon to hit China in the last fifty years.

    When it landed, the eye of the typhoon had wind speeds of over two hundred kilometers per hour.

    Typhoon Saomai also brought torrential rainstorms to neighboring Fujian Province.

    Local offices predict that, today alone, over a hundred and fifty millimeters of rain could be dumped on some areas of the province.

    The eye has been moving northwestward at a speed of twenty kilometers per hour, and has now reached east China's Jiangxi Province.

    Jiangxi's flood control department say their emergency plans to minimize the impact of Saomai are already being carried out.

    While in Beijing, weathermen in the National Meteorological Center are watching this massive storm very carefully...

    "Staff in the relevant departments are working twenty-four hours a day. Eleven coastal provinces have jointly started emergency efforts... Observation stations in these areas are conducting surface monitoring every ten minutes, and air monitoring every three hours."

    The State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters has urged authorities at all levels in the typhoon-hit areas to launch their local emergency plans - giving their top priority to safeguarding lives.

    The Flood Control Headquarters has issued a level-three warning on their one-to-four scale, and has sent work teams to Zhejiang and Fujian to help coordinate the disaster relief work.

    So far, about twenty thousand soldiers and militiamen have been deployed on China's eastern coastline to boost rescue and disaster relief efforts as the area gets thumped by this huge storm. 

      (Source: CCTV)